After making my weekend guests happy with a large pot of water-processed fair trade decaf, I sought out one of the small-batch coffee making implements that I have stashed away for this very type of situation to brew a cup with caffeine for me. You see, the ability to accommodate any combination and number of tea and coffee preferences around my kitchen table is a point of pride.

First try, the cone thing and gold filter, but I ground the beans too fine creating a deep black and chewy beverage. Then to the Aeropress, which has never let me down, but again, the wrong grind for the method. It gets blurry here, but there was some sort of an attempt to salvage brew one or brew two, I cannot be sure which. After one sip of the ersatz coffee, I gave up, smiled at my friends who understand that vacillating between competency and ineptitude is my natural state. “Maybe the coffee truck will be at the green market.” I announced, feigning hope, and out the door we went.

For those, not familiar with the term ersatz, it means a substance serving as a substitute for something natural or genuine. Forever the word ersatz is fused with the idea of coffee because once, while playing scrabble with my Mother when I was young, she placed ersatz in the corner for the triple word score and the game. As her victory would due nicely as my vocabulary lesson, my protests about the word were met with, “Look it up.”

The dictionary I consulted gave the definition plus an elaborate example… paraphrasing from memory, it mentioned that during the Civil War that coffee supplies fell and prices rose due to war strategies and racketeering. This required the South to get resourceful and fortify their days with a coffee blend made from varying amounts of coffee, chicory, grain and even potato peels. So that is my forever and emphatic definition of ersatz – something that is NOT a substitute at all, but a sad excuse for that which is good and serving only to remind you of what you don’t have. This circuitous story is meant to explain that ersatz coffee is beyond bad coffee. And it is reasonable to say that a beverage that reminds you of boiled potato skins is, indeed, well beyond bad coffee.

Now, I had a choice, since there was no coffee truck at the green market, would my coffee-free state ruin my day or not. It would not. The day was too lovely. Granted, a vague phantom, something’s missing feeling followed me through out this otherwise bucolic day.

Fast forward to sundown. The visitors gone. Maybe I would try to brew again or should I leave it to some local professionals? Then I remembered that I had some organic European freeze dried coffee. I mixed it with cold water, then colder milk and agave nectar making something that more resembled a coffee milk shake than a fine coffee, but nonetheless, satisfaction followed.

Rather than leave you with an ersatz moral to the story, suffice it to say, today was about appreciating the moment and delaying satisfaction. Tomorrow is all about finding a barista class.